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The Centre for Contemporary Histories (CCH) is a dynamic, diverse and distinctive research centre that delivers and translates high-quality research into outcomes that are relevant and meaningful to contemporary society.

Since it was established in 2015, CCH has become a critical research body to understand the uses of history in public debate and the unfinished business of the modern past.

Under the leadership of Professor Cassandra Atherton, Associate Professor Clare Corbould, Associate Professor Tony Joel, Professor David Lowe and Professor Andrew Singleton the CCH brings together more than 50 researchers working on topics ranging from Australia’s Indigenous past, the material transmission of culture, religious change in Australia, to the political uses of history, revolution in Europe and modern Pacific history.

Leadership team

Associate Professor Cassandra Atherton

Associate Professor Cassandra Atherton is an award-winning Australian prose-poet, critic and scholar. She is an expert on prose poetry, contemporary public intellectuals in academe and poets as public intellectuals, especially hibakusha poets. Most recently, Cassandra was a Visiting Scholar in English at Harvard University sponsored by Professor Stephen Greenblatt and she was a Visiting Fellow in the Institute of Comparative Culture at Sophia University, Tokyo in 2014. She has published nineteen critical and creative books (with six more in progress) and has been invited to edit ten special editions of leading refereed journals.

Associate Professor Clare Corbould

Associate Professor Clare Corbould is a historian of the United States with expertise in African American politics and culture. She has also published work on the transnational development of ideas about race and practices of racism and resistance in the US and Australia.
Tony Joel

Associate Professor Tony Joel

Associate Professor Tony Joel is an award-winning historian whose two main research interests, sports history and the politics of war memory and commemoration, have led to field and archival research trips conducted in ten countries. Tony chairs multiple units at Deakin, including the Holocaust, sport in history, and a new unit on the history of Australian football, which is the world's first university unit specifically devoted to this subject. Tony is a former German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) research scholarship holder, and in 2016 he received an Award for Teaching Excellence in the Humanities and the Arts in the Australian Awards for University Teaching (AAUT).

Professor David Lowe

Professor David Lowe is Chair in Contemporary History in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. His teaching and research is primarily focused on modern international history, including Australia in the world, postwar international development and the legacies of modern conflicts. David is a co-founder of the Australian Policy and History network and a Fellow of the Academy for Social Sciences in Australia. He is also an Honorary Academic Fellow of the Australia India Institute and a Life Member of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge.
Andrew Singleton

Professor Andrew Singleton

Andrew is Professor of Sociology and Social Research in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Deakin. His research interests include spirituality, youth religion, new religious movements, secularisation, non-religion, and religious movements in the Global South. Andrew has presented and published extensively in these areas both nationally and internationally. A social research practitioner, Andrew incorporates survey research, participant observation, in-depth interviews, focus groups, and archival research into his work.

Our team

Australian Policy
 and History

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